Last week,
The Intercept published documents that definitively debunked
and disproved a claim which numerous media outlets had circulated and
affirmed for years: that Edward Snowden lied about where he was
during his first 11 days in Hong Kong. Contrary to the fable these
outlets dispensed to their readers – that Snowden did not check
into the Mira Hotel on May 21 as he claimed but only did so on June
1: 11 days later – these new documents, obtained from the Mira,
prove that Snowden arrived there exactly when he always said,
rendering their published stories factually false. Many of these
stories had even claimed that anonymous U.S. investigators were
unable to find hotel or credit card records for Snowden during these
11 days – exactly the records we just published.
The same day
our story was published, the New York Times reporter Charlie Savage –
who had previously spent weeks documenting that this claim about
Snowden never had any journalistic basis to begin with – confirmed
the authenticity of the new documents. As Savage wrote: “the
documents show [Snowden] stayed in both the Icon and then, starting
on May 21st, the Mira, under his own name, using his own credit
cards. So there is no mystery gap, and the credit card records
obviously were readily available to American investigators all
along.”
The
concocted discrepancy was significant because these media outlets –
and many commentators citing their false story – used it to
strongly suggest that Snowden, during these “Missing 11 Days,”
was doing something nefarious: such as meeting his Russian or Chinese
handlers. Numerous outlets uncritically aired this false claim,
including the Wall Street Journal, Yahoo News, Business Insider,
Slate, Interpreter Magazine and Folha de S.Paulo (Brazil’s largest
newspaper).
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